3.31.2016

Imagine walking into Starbucks, FINALLY, after you have been fighting a day-long sweet tooth, stood patiently in line, walked up to the counter only to be told that the person in front of you bought the last Iced Lemon Pound Cake they had.

Yes, I am equating this house-hunting process to Starbucks pastries. And no, I see no issues with that.

Then imagine you tuck in your pouty lip, and go find another Starbucks, and you see that lucious, zesty Iced Lemon Pound Cake just flirting with you from the case. She's a beaut. And you order it, and your giddy and your mouth is watering, and the barista tells you that she's going to cost you roughly 4x what she's worth. And you try to reassure them that all other Starbuck's only sell them for a fraction of the cost, but the barista isn't budging.

And you untuck your pouty lip, and hand the most perfect little pound cake back, and walk out the door.

And every other Starbucks sucks. And every other pound cake has sucked since then. And you are about to become paleo just so you can't even EAT a pound cake even if you found one.

I'm not bitter or anything. I'm totally cool with house-hunting. I don't take it personally, or get upset, or fall in love with any of the houses. Me? No. Nooo.

We're back to square one. For the third time. Blah blah blah, don't try feeding me the 'we'll stumble upon the most perfect one when we least expect it' line, my level of patience is on par with that of a toddler.

3.10.2016

Have you ever realized how much more personal a home is versus a house? You 'house hunt', but it becomes your 'home sweet home'. How is it that some freestanding structure becomes such a part of who we are as a person?

It's one of the oddest things, to tell someone you're contemplating selling your house. It's as if you're telling someone you're considering voluntarily becoming a paraplegic. There is so much shock and confusion.

Don't get me wrong, I love my home more than anything. I absolutely adore these four walls, the stair cases, the backyard, the little white fence. I love the paint colors I chose, the paint colors I painted over, the floors I stained, the things I furnished it will, the plants I planted. This house was my own. I hunted and hunted and fell in love and signed the papers five and a half years ago.

But to me, she's still just four walls. She made up the grounds for a lot of great memories, but she isn't the memories themselves. Everything filling this foundation are just additives to my life, they aren't my life itself.

Maybe it's because I am voluntarily selling my house. Maybe that is why it's so foreign.

All of this babbling is the long way of saying that Tate & I have started house-hunting. Yea, gasp, big step. It started as a hair-brained idea, as we were chatting longingly about exposed brick walls over a couple Moscow mules during one of our regular date nights. Our list of wishes and wants gracefully unfolded into a few peeks at local listings, a pre approval letter, and a call to our realtor.

I had forgotten how much I loved the house-hunting process. Stepping through front door after front door, never knowing what quirks you will find. Every house tells such a story itself, but it also provides such blank page and I can't help but start to fill those pages in my head with how our life together would unfold in each room.

Some have been total bunks from the get go, and some have sparked our interest. We already had our first minor heartbreak when we learned that a dream-inducing condo FULL of exposed-brick had received 3 offers just days after we looked at it.

All of this means that eventually it will be time to put my home on the market, to make that jump, and become an official downtown Indianapolis urbanite instead of just a suburban pretending to be hip. It's exciting, and also slightly terrifying. But mostly, it just feels right.

Here's to hoping this transition from home to house to home is everything we could have hoped for!

3.04.2016

To this very page. This page, that you can't see, because if you're reading this it means I've actually hit the Publish button... this page is the draft page. At this exact moment there are 83 posts sitting unpublished in my draft page.

Fear of Missing Out. Which is weird. Because blogging is just rehashing your own life, so what am I fearing - missing moments of my own life?

But it's the truth. Because right now, I struggle to remember little moments I never wanted to forget. Moments from when I was in Ireland, or when I was receiving 'no more cancer!" results from my niece's doctor, or the moments when I first started letting myself fall in love again.

Those are the stories I miss sharing. Those are the stories I miss re-reading in two, four, seven years. Do yourself a favor though, don't go back to those 2009 posts. They're REAL awkward. I'd like to think at some point I developed a voice, and this place was halfway fun. Those first posts were anything but.

So, as with all things in life lately, I've decided it's time to put an effort to put my heart back into everything I once loved. Because why would I waste my life doing anything I wasn't absolutely crazy about?!